Notes from 1993: It’s hard to know what to say here. This is a tune that I wrote for Pete Colby and April Limber, who so tragically died on a December day in 1988. I tried for a long time to write them a lament, but with no real success. This tune finally appeared at the beginning of last winter. And though it started out as a lament (and can be played as one) it was evident after I sent it over to Martyn that it wasn’t to stay that way. Now I hear it as a tribute to two people who were integral to my music and my life. I met Pete and April when I was twelve or thirteen, back in the early days of the Canterbury Orchestra, where I was drawn to April’s fiddle and Pete’s banjo and autoharp. They became and remained constants in my life and what else can I say, except that I miss them terribly and some part of me will always keep playing in their honor. Once again I am indebted to Martyn for his brilliant arrangement of my simple melody. Thanks Martyn.
Notes from 2008:
Much has changed in the 15 years since the Untamed Grasses first came out, as life does. Perhaps the biggest change has been losing Martyn Bennett to cancer in 2005 two weeks shy of his 34th birthday. Martyn achieved a huge amount in his short time on this earth.
I was lucky enough to work with him when he was still at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Dance in Glasgow, before he had made a world-wide name for himself on the cutting edge of Scottish music.
His mother Margaret, a traditional singer and folklorist, put together a small book of remembrances called It’s Not the Time You Have…Notes and Memories of Music-Making with Martyn Bennett. Here is my contribution:
"Our teachers come in many forms, ages, sizes. One of my greatest was Martyn. He was 19 and I was 30. I had lost my mother to a fight with alcoholism in February of that year - on or within a day of Martyn's birthday as it happens. I was asked at the last minute to come to Pinewoods for a week that summer by Lorraine to fill in for someone - so it was by chance that I was there.
After lunch one day, Martyn and I were noodling around on stuff - he on the piano, me on the whistle - I played a lament that I had just written for my mother - Martyn put some chords behind it and when we stopped, he turned around to me and said "that was the most beautiful tune I've ever heard, what was it?" Embarrassed, I mumbled something about my mother. Within a half an hour we were in the open-sided dance pavilion - and the rain was coming down in sheets, all around us. We huddled by the piano, Martyn with music manuscript paper, hands on the keys, pen in his teeth, working out, as only Martyn could do - this most amazing, evocative arrangement of my simple melody. It was one of the most intense two hours I have ever spent.
We decided that we would play it in the concert that night - but I said to him that I didn't want to tell people what it was. And we did. We played it, and as it ended I broke down and sobbed, those gut-wrenching sobs. Martyn came over and put his arm around me and said quietly into the microphone "That was a lament that Sarah wrote for her mother who just died in February." Over the next few days, people came up to me and told me that they too had been crying - they told of how they had lost someone near and dear and they hadn't really felt it until that moment - and how grateful they were.
Until that moment - that absolute catharsis, with all those people present to bear witness to my grief- I had no clue how powerful was this gift of music that I had been so freely given. Martyn accessed that for me that day, and I have been trying to give back ever since.
I was fortunate to be able to head over to Scotland and record Martyn's piano arrangement of the lament for my mum later that year. And then a couple of years later to have Martyn work out and record another piece that I did for my second CD.
There is a coda to all of this. On the second piece that he arranged - another lament as it turns out for two musician friends, Pete Colby and April Limber, who died very tragically and way too soon back in 1988.
Martyn had just gotten his first midi-synthesizer- thing - I'm embarrassed to say I don't know what it was called! He did the whole arrangement and programmed it all in-- in fact he did 3 or 4 versions of this for me. Naturally he liked the wildest one - with big drums and lots of percussion. I remember his disappointment when I went for the tamest of the arrangements, because he was so excited about what he'd done - and he just wanted me to be sharing that excitement with him. I was still in that place where I hadn't gotten past my fear of what people would think. I then added my flute track back here in the States and when the album came out I, too was very disappointed with my choice. Not only was it tame - but the flute sounded awful to me - it was very flat - both in pitch and in the performance. As an amends to Martyn and a tribute, I have dug out the DAT tape with the "big" arrangement and am putting it on my next CD, that I am currently working on with a big low whistle that is in tune!
In addition to the earlier lessons learned from Martyn, sadly his death has also taught me so much-- mostly about seizing the moment and not wasting it."

So this track is the updated version of December Day, which is still for Pete and April, but it’s also for Martyn, and I’ve renamed it “Liberation.” This is on Martyn’s headstone where he’s buried in the cemetery at Calgary, on the Isle of Mull. “Liberation” applies to all three of them. The track has Kent Allyn playing piano and bass, and I’ve added new whistle and flute, and I used the most expansive version that Martyn programmed all those years ago in 1993.